Peter Anthony Cantu, shown at his 1994 trial, was the one who called for Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña to be killed so they couldn't identify their attackers.

Peter Anthony Cantu, shown at his 1994 trial, was the one who called for Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña to be killed so they couldn't identify their attackers.

Photo: Ben DeSoto, Chronicle File

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Death near for Ertman-Peña killer, but crime still shakes Houston

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Seventeen years later, the simple mention of their names still evokes a shudder, a shake of the head that such a thing could happen.

Ertman … Peña. Their photos are familiar now, attached to countless news reports since then: the same two pictures, teen girls who despite the makeup were girls still. Their story has been oft-repeated, in the retelling burnished to a handful of details: the fateful choice of a route home, the abduction from the railroad tracks, the decision of one to turn back when she heard her friend scream, the clothes ripped from their bodies, the multiple and repeated assaults, the inexplicable decision that they must die in a manner equally brutal.

They probably would be married women now, Jennifer Ertman and Elizabeth Peña, perhaps with children of their own. Instead they are forever 14 and 16, a pair of innocents who slipped into the darkness of Houston's near north side one summer night and re-emerged in bright sunlight on a funeral home gurney — targets of a crime so incomprehensible that it was, in the words of one of the lawyers later involved, burned into the collective consciousness of the city.

The architect of their deaths will pay with his own life Tuesday evening. The execution of Peter Anthony Cantu in Huntsville will all but end the legal odyssey that began with the arrest of six young men ratted out by a disgusted relative. It was Cantu who asserted Ertman and Peña had to be killed so as not to later bear witness against them.

Now 35, Cantu declined requests for an interview. He will be the third of the attackers to be put to death, following Derrick O'Brien and Jose Medellin.

The parents of Ertman and Peñ a could not be reached for comment.

"Assuming everything goes as we hope it goes on Tuesday, that chapter of that book for the Ertmans and Peñ as will be forever done," said Andy Kahan, the former head of the Mayor's Crime Victims office, who now holds a similar position with the Houston Police Department. "It's been a long journey, and for the families an emotional roller coaster."

Case shook city

No crime in modern Houston history has resonated like this one, Kahan said.

"It's very, very rare that you can refer to a case by the victims' families and people will know what you're talking about," he said."Most people know it from the defendant's name. But when you go around and ask anybody in the city of Houston, do you remember the Ertman/Peñ a case, they will immediately say, 'Yes, the two girls who were gang-raped and brutally killed.' This case galvanized the residents of Houston."

It also had other ramifications. Kahan assisted the girl's parents in changing state policy to allow relatives of victims to witness executions. He also worked with former State District Judge Bill Harmon, who presided over the trial, to allow Randy Ertman to address Cantu immediately before sentence was pronounced.Victim impact statements, now commonplace, were all but unheard-of until Ertman was given leave to speak to Cantu in open court. His stinging denunciation of Cantu, pain evident in each word, reached a climax when Cantu turned away from the grieving father and Ertman yelled, "You look at me! … You're not even an animal. You're the worst thing I've ever seen. Look at me! Look at me good!"

Kahan, who had become close to the families, said Ertman's bellicose rebuke was an inevitable culmination of eight exhausting months and five trials filled with gruesome details of his daughter's death.

"No one who was there will forget it," Kahan said.

Unfathomable cruelty

Then again, no one has forgotten much of anything about those murders. In June 1993, Houston was busy reveling in the boom after the bust. Jobs were back and property was rising in value. New development was everywhere, spurred by a mayor and city council devoted to the cause of building. Serious crime was still a problem, but the overall trends looked good. Then, on the morning of June 30, the city awoke to learn of events of a few days earlier that defied belief.

Two Waltrip High School students had left a Thursday night gathering of friends in a rush to be home before their curfew. To save time, they took a shortcut that led along railroad tracks near T.C. Jester Park. By coincidence, a handful of teenagers who had just completed a boozy, fight-filled gang initiation ritual noticed their shadowy figures. The girls were grabbed, repeatedly raped, then strangled, beaten and stomped beyond recognition.

People normally immune to the shock of another murder were stunned by the savagery of what happened on a moonless muggy night along the banks of White Oak Bayou. This was something more than the danger inherent in big-city life. This suggested a lurking evil, omnipresent and inchoate. If it could show up at such a nondescript moment - teenagers unknown to each other passing in the night - perhaps no one's safety was more than an illusion.

Even the police were stunned. The attackers shouted obscenities at TV cameras when they were arrested and reportedly bragged of their crimes once in their jail cells. The killers didn't crumple or cry when recounting the bestiality of their acts to investigators. All of it - the entire ugly tableau of human destruction - was told as if it had been a TV rerun from a year ago.

Long history of trouble

Somehow the story became worse at trial. Cantu's brother, Joe, testified about what inspired him to call police. The gang of attackers had showed up at his house after the killings. They expressed no regret or even a second thought at what they had done. In fact, they laughed and joked as they divvied up the pitiful spoils of the evening: a small amount of cash, some inexpensive rings and gold chains. They spoke of having "a lot of fun (with) a couple of chicks."

By the end of Cantu's trial, jurors had been burdened with a load of disturbing details, not just about the crime itself, which prosecutor Donna Goode likened to the work of a "pack of wild dogs," but about the young man who made it happen. Cantu had been troubled and violent since his early youth. He had fought or bullied other students, assaulted a teacher, threatened another youth with a knife in a parking lot after deliberately provoking a confrontation. He threatened to kill security guards at the alternative school he periodically attended.

"He was a kid you remembered," one former teacher said.

Had desire to kill

A month before Ertman and Peñ a crossed his path, Cantu had mentioned to his former auto mechanics teacher that he wanted to kill someone "just to see what it feels like," according to testimony. When the teacher told Cantu the trouble he would get into for such a thing, he said he didn't care. Possibly he did not.

The day after the murders, Cantu showed up at his job at an oil change shop and acted as if nothing was out of the ordinary, his boss told the Chronicle at the time. Cantu was a good worker who was courteous with customers, the boss said, stunned that the "yes, sir" guy he knew changed so dramatically when the workday ended.

Nightmare neighbor

At home, nothing appeared to constrain him. Cantu's mother, sometimes absent, appeared unconcerned when school officials or authorities showed up to discuss his behavior. He apparently did as he pleased. Those who lived near his home in Houston Heights described him as a nightmare neighbor - loud, obnoxious, rude and uncaring - and spoke of large groups of young men his age who would gather at the home when no adults were around.

"Anytime girls came down the street, they'd come out and hoot and holler at them and make vulgar remarks to them," a former neighbor said the day after his arrest.

One night the words turned into acts. Six anonymous teens stoked on alcohol and testosterone needed only an hour or so to make their mark on the city. Cantu's execution won't quite bring an end to the legal saga that followed. It will not erase from memory the faces in the photographs, or the knowledge of what happened to them.

"Jenny and Elizabeth were everybody's daughters," said Kahan. "This was so senseless."